Mike’s post of delightful cheer.
Just a couple brief notes:
1. Having glanced through the last issue of the Civil War series, my immediate thought was “this really wasn’t worth all the grief we had to put up with.” And to my customers who asked “Is this it? Is Civil War finally over?” — all I could do was sadly shake my head. More one-shots and other assorted follow-ups to come, my friends…keep your wallets ready.
2. My comments to Employee Aaron as I was going through some ’50s and ’60s Blackhawk comics:
“Okay, I know this isn’t how it worked, but looking at these things…it’s like, if a comic script wasn’t good enough for the Superman line of books, it was passed over to Batman and slightly rewritten for use there. If the script wasn’t good enough for Batman, it was passed down to the Blackhawk guys and rewritten for that team. And if the script wasn’t good enough for the Blackhawks, they gave it to Wonder Woman.”
I repeat: I KNOW THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DID. But after seeing the Blackhawks fight a bald scientist or the Blackhawk Revenge Sq…er, the League of Anti-Blackhawks or, for God’s sake, Cat-Man, you can’t help but wonder.
3. From the Newsarama article on Stephen King’s appearance at the New York con:
“[Marvel editor-in-chief Joe] Quesada went on to say that publishing the Dark Tower comic book has been the coming out party for the comic book industry, noting that this project will be able to reach far out into the mainstream, and show that comics are a serious art form, and ‘an art form to be reckoned with.'”
Well, no, it won’t, but it’ll sell well for a while, and it’s not a bad comic, so I can’t complain about that. But it’s not going to make everyone start taking the medium “seriously.” Like I said before, it’ll get non-comic-reading King fans in the door to buy Dark Tower (and only Dark Tower)…at least for a while, until they get tired of trying to keep up with a comic on a monthly basis (or whatever publishing schedule it finally ends up being on).
So after whatever sales-bump/media attention Marvel is getting from their current novelty publishing license dies down, mainstream news coverage will go from the “Hey, did you know there’s a Stephen King comic book” stories we’re getting now, and back to the “BAM! ZAP! POW! Comics are (worth money/corrupting kids/still being published, believe it or not/cheap R&D for movies where real money is to be made/read by freaks like this local collector we’re interviewing)” stories the industry usually gets. And non-comic-readers will go back (if they ever stopped) to looking upon comics with indifference, if not outright disdain.
Bitter cynicism aside…I thought it was kinda cool that Stephen King went to the New York Con to plug the project. I’m enough of a fanboy to admit it.
